24 Weeks!

I'm 24 weeks today so I figured it's time for another belly shot. :P Only I just remembered before bed, so it's a lovely end of the day, in my pajamas shot, courtesy of Ben (my son). :)

Also, according to the poll, it seems that "Gunnor" lost the contest...by a long shot....sorry Rob. :P

One more thing. The adoption agency let us know that we're not eligible to adopt since we're prego, and won't be until Dec. 2010. I'm honestly relieved to not have an infant right now. We would have taken him/her if we felt right about it and he/she had been offered to us, but deep down I'm glad to only have one baby to get used to at a time!!

2 Babies?????

Almost 3 weeks (May 27th) after we found out we were pregnant I got a call from my lds adoption social worker asking if I had a few minutes to talk. I told her I did. Then she asked if Rob was around..."No, he's still working." She replied saying it was okay and that she just has a few questions. I say, "Okaaaay."

(BTW: we haven't told her that we're pregnant, and I'm not exactly sure what their policy is regarding our specific circumstances anyway...usually they say people GET an adopted baby, and THEN find out they're pregnant....I've always been a bit backwards.) :P

So, my thoughts when she said this:

A: she's found out through the grapevine that we're pregnant and calling to ask me straight up about it and let me know that we're being put on hold...

OR

B: there's a mom/baby in the picture and they're considering us...

Social Worker (SW) asks: 1. How do you feel about homeopathic doctors?

Me: All for them, I use them. (My witch doctor being one) ;)

SW: Okay. 2. What about home/birthing center births with a midwife.

Me: That's good too. (I personally am not comfortable enough to use one myself because of my health history, but my sister has used a midwife a few times and she's had some really neat, personal, unique experiences...I think it's really neat, so I felt okay saying I'm okay with it since we were referring to the birth-mom.) :P

SW: Okay. 3. Do you ever buy organic food.

Me: Yes.

SW: Good. 4. What about immunizations. I know what we require of you, but how do you personally feel about it?

Me: If it were up to me, I'd choose a delayed schedule or none at all.

SW: That's what I thought. Well, we have a birth-mom working with the SLC branch that has those requests and it's hard to find couples with these specific beliefs/preferences but we thought of you two. I'm going to call the other social worker tonight and tell her about you. This is exciting!! By the way, how are you doing?

Me: (Thinking....good....should I mention I'm pregnant?....No. Not yet.) Good!

SW: Great! I don't know if she'll want to meet you but we'll let you know.

I was beyond words when I got off the phone. I told Molly my dilemma since she was the only one around (Dilemma #1: do I tell now, do I wait? Originally we were going to wait until after the first trimester to tell them, just to make sure everything was going well. Dilemma #2: Do we take the baby if they want to give it to us even if we are pregnant??). Molly said, "Don't tell, just say "thanks" and take the baby." As if we could. :P

The birth-mom is due in August!!! What if we are the family for this little baby! Wow! What a way to do it!! 2 babies 5 months apart!

Update: Rob emailed our case worker a while back because we NEVER heard anything after that surprising phone call. She told him that the birth-father had gotten involved and was trying to convince her to keep the baby, so she was unsure what she'd choose. Rob and I decided that we should start getting some of our baby stuff before August (esp. car seat) in case the birth mom decided at the last minute to give the baby to us!!! It would be a little crazy, but we'd be very happy to have another baby!!

Happy Happy Day!!!

The day has come at last that I was beginning to think would never come!!

We are live and published on the LDS adoption website!!! It seemed that everything was conspiring against us to get to this point, between miscommunication with our case worker, to expired doctor visit/physicals, to part of Rob's driver's license photo copy being cut off so that his background check wasn't working but nobody telling us....to all kinds of other things, it seemed like it would never happen! Well, at the beginning of this week our case worker called and said that we were approved!! I wanted to make sure it wasn't just the preliminary approval, but the actual committee approval and she assured me it was....so I once again thought we were home-free. Every day I checked the website...several times every day.... :) to see if we were up and "live". But alas we were not, day after day. However I was trying not to lose heart because our case worker told me that she didn't know how long it would take the "computer people" to get our profile posted. Finally today I decided to call the adoption secretary over there and ask her what to expect and maybe if we were live and I just couldn't figure it out. :P (She's been in my parents' ward since I was in first grade so I didn't feel too bad about calling to chat with her about it). She told me that we were not published yet and that it was our case worker's job to "push the button" and make us "live". She told me to call her and let her know that. I called and had to leave a message, politely asking her if she might make us "live" on the website. Finally, SUCCESS!!! Tonight when I sat down to the computer, I checked the website, did a search and actually found us!!

You can check it out here if you want.

Now....where's our baby? ;)

P.S. If you know anybody who knows anybody who knows somebody who's looking for a family for their child....you can refer them to our profile its #5588632 on beta.itsaboutlove.org or our adoption blog: http://looking4atiebreaker.blogspot.com/. Thanks a million y'all for your love and support and encouragement that you've given us!!!!

Another Petition To All You Creative People I Know!!

We had our Home study on Saturday for the adoption!! It turned out well and we're so relieved to have it over with!! GM had an interview with our caseworker yesterday and she said we'd be approved by the end of the month!!! I have a good feeling about this, and feel like she's out there somewhere and she'll find us!

We've been working on our website for birth mothers to view once we're approved and it's almost done:

• we uploaded 26 pictures of us as a family, us as a couple, and us individually with our kids
• we answered a ton of questions about our favorites and all that
• we wrote our letter to the birth parents (a LONG time ago) :P

and so now our last step is to write a teaser that will entice birth mothers/fathers to choose to open our profile and look at us amongst the vast sea of potentials!

We have ~200 characters to grab their attention and invite them to see more....

below are a few examples of real life teasers:

• Two Angels have delivered to us gifts from God. Could our third angel be you?
• "Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression." Haim Ginott
• **** "Where there is great love there are miracles." We are a fun family of 4 waiting for our miracle. Click on us to find out more and visit us at www.earlandkatie.blogspot.com*****

The profiles are on this website.

HELP!! :)

My favorite pastime

One of my favorite things to do lately (as if this is a great big secret to anybody) :) is think about our baby, and where he/she will come from, who he/she will be, what he/she will be like, etc. I just spent a half an hour watching adoption commercials for lds family services and balling, not because I'm feeling sad or sorry for us, just because they really know how to pull the heartstrings!! I can't imagine being in the position of a birth mom and having to make the choice between keeping my baby and giving him/her to a family that could give it what I couldn't.

Church is another time that babies are on the brain. :P There's been so many births lately. It seems every Sunday there's at least one new birth to be announced. A couple of weeks ago they said that two sets of boy/girl twins (I think they're called bobsy twins?) had come to two different families exactly a week apart. Well, this week they offered congratulations to one happy couple who had a baby this week, and then condolences to a couple whose baby was stillborn. Their funeral service is tomorrow. My heart went out to that couple. I'm not sure how I'd be able to handle that. I think it might be worse than not being able to conceive at all.

(I agree with Wayne, sometimes having compassion for the trials of others makes me thankful for my own).

Feeling impatient

My sister had her baby this weekend. Another cute little redhead that they named Paxton. I got to watch her oldest for 2 nights and we had a blast. We visited the hospital (waiting the whole time while his mommy had a c-section) and he was so cute with his little brother. The next day our whole family (ML, BR, MC and I) went to the hospital to drop off my nephew and see my sis and her baby again. The kids washed their hands right when we got there so that they could hold the baby. I got a turn, and then ML wanted to hold him. I love seeing ML with a baby. He really is a natural. As we left the hospital he expressed emotions that I'd been trying to suppress, "Why is every other family we know given babies right and left?" We try not to ask the proverbial "Why us...or rather, why not us??" but sometimes its tough to not question the reasons for our trials.

Before pictures: my sister and my darling little nephews





I called our case worker, wanting her to read our "Birth Parent Letter" and look at our "Adoption Collage" so that we can get them approved or fix anything she thinks we need to change. She told me that she'll look at those when she comes to our house for our "home visit". She told me she'd call to schedule that. It's been a week. No big deal, I know, especially when we've taken months to do our part of things. But now that the ball is in her court, I wish I could just press the fast forward button. :)

Everybody's happy!

I spent the whole day at my sister's house yesterday. There were many benefits for all in this arrangement.

1. I have a HUGE debt to repay to my sister for childcare that she provided my kids while we were in Europe. This made up one measely day, but hey 1 is better than none! :P
2. ML had finals to work on (due today...which he finished in record time, I might add) so it was better if he didn't have us around to distract him.
3. My sister and her husband wanted to go house shopping. They went out twice yesterday while I was there to provide babysitting. The second time they found a phenomenal deal on the house of their dreams! Yay for them!!!
4. Grandma and Grandpa didn't have to go crazy with five hyperactive kids all cooped up in our house all day. (I don't know if your kids get like this, but whenever my kids get with their cousins they ALL start bouncing off the walls and it's as if there are ten or fifteen kids instead of five...I remember being like that, I'd venture that maybe it's hereditary, but then....guess not.) :)
5. I got to work on scrapbooking for our adoption and use my sister's vast inventory of paper/stamps/ribbon/idea books/etc. as well as get feedback and ideas from her (when she could get down off her "I found the house of my dreams and it's a steal" high for a minute to actually give it some thought). I really got pretty far and I'm very excited about that! I only have a few finishing touches left to finish up and then I can get moving with the whole thing!! Yay!!
6. The kids got to spend ALL day with their cousins. And if you couldn't tell from some of the aforementioned benefits...they think that's about as great as an amusement park!! (We were asking them what they wanted to do on Martin Luther since the don't have school: #1 go to cousin's house. #2 go to indoor/outdoor amusement park "Boondocks")
7. BR had used his much beloved, hard earned allowance money to buy 2 legos last week. One for himself and one for his cousin. He was able to give his cousin the lego he'd bought for him. (He was really excited to give it to him, and proud of himself for being so generous, but honestly I had my doubts that he'd be able to resist opening it until he had a chance to give it to him.)

#5 is my very favorite bonus. But, I'm glad that the arrangement was so inclusively beneficial!

Camping with the treasured cousins

Progress on the Adoption App

To clear up all confusion: I was not adopted. :) And we ARE adopting. :)

On that note, here's our progress: We're on our way with the letter. ML has his personal interview tomorrow evening with our case worker. So now we need to put together two 8 & 1/2 by 11 scrapbook pages that show our family in a nutshell. These are the pictures we were thinking of using. It's kind of like a collage.



If any of you have any pictures of us that you think would be good, or know of any, we'd love to have them. :) Our pictures are mostly supposed to be of us as a couple and us all together as a family.

Now taking votes on the Pictures to put on our Adoption Scrapbook Profile

"Quaint Italian Restaurant"


"ML and MC doing fireworks"


"The Fourth of July"


"Taking TRAX downtown to see the lights"


"Halloween"


"ML and MC driving the boat"


"ML and BR swimming in the lake"


"ML and MC playing in the park"


"Me and MC and my nephew in the pool"


"ML swimming with BR and neice"


"MC gettin’ down"


"Me, MC and nephew wading in the pool at PAWS bridal shower"


"Hiking on our Memorial camping trip"


"ML and BR in their sword fight"


"MC and BR exploring"


"Me and ML on Christmas 2006"


"Me and ML in a river"


"Me and ML on a 4-wheeling trip"


"Whole fam after the 4-wheeling trip"


"Me and ML on our camel ride in Egypt"


"Me and ML on the Isle of Capri"


"Whole fam in front of the house"

Happy New Year Everybody!!

This year bodes many good things, I can just feel it! ;) So many things happened this past year that I wouldn't even have been able to guess at last New Years!!

One great thing was that my parents invited us on a cruise to the Mediterranean! It was the one I was hoping to do, my absolute dream cruise, but I never thought it would happen...it seemed far too unrealistic to hope for. I planned, pondered, wondered and searched the Internet for hours in preparation for that cruise...probably far longer than the 17 days we were gone. ;) And I must say, it was incredible! I was ecstatic to just leave our continent first of all, but then after the thrill of crossing the ocean for the first time and setting foot on European soil, many more amazing things followed. (Sorry, can't give a travel-log here though.)

Another super-great event was that BR got his name drawn in a lottery for a FANTASTIC charter school and I didn't have to home school anymore (if you listen really hard you might hear 3...maybe even 4 "whew"s after that)! It was Ben's idea to apply to the charter schools ;) and we had no idea which ones were any good at the time but it just so happens (you may call it coincidence, but I think not!) that it's the best one in the area (no bias here). :P

MC (and all of us) was thrilled when her first girl cousin on ML's side of the family arrived and we got to go meet her and attend her blessing. We've all loved to see her grow...really to see her any chance we get. ;)

In addition to that our wonderful PAWS met a fantastic man on LDS singles (great site) ;) and we got to hear all about him when she'd clean with us every week. It was so great to hear her talk about a good guy for a change, well let me amend that, a guy who appreciated her and saw in her the wonderful things that those other guys were too blind to see. Then...well, then we lost our dear PAWS. She moved to Phoenix. Sad for us but happy for her and her "LOML". :) We couldn't be happier about it though, cuz if she's happy, we're happy!

Then we found out that our dear PAWS decided to get married in the Chicago Temple AND that we would be able to go AND that we'd be able to participate in the sealing of several special ancestors to ML and his family. (It was a once in a lifetime experience and we wouldn't have traded any of it for the world...well except for the part when we made Serin miss her flight, but that too was serindipitous for us because we got to hang out with her for the evening). :P

As all of this is happening ML gets encouraged to apply, and hired to a new position at the credit union. Well, I don't know if he would count this as one of the great things of 2007 but I have a feeling that someday we'll be able to look back and see past all of the heartache and trials that have accompanied this position, and we'll be able to again see the Hand of God guiding his path. I believe that it will yet be another stepping stone for him to ultimately have the perfect career for him. (However, perhaps in his mind, he just left behind the perfect career...almost).

One blessing that definitely came from his promotion at the CU was that it led to the next momentous blessing in our lives! We decided to start looking at buying a house. Well, there were several factors that led to the fulfilment of that dream but through ML's promotion, the market changing to a buyer's market, and ML's parents wanting a place that they could call "home in Utah" (as opposed to their "home in Colorado") :P we were able to buy a home that is a dream!! Before this actually happened I was continually holding to the idea that we would get a home after ML finished school, and that it would be nuts to even think about buying a home before that...well there's no saying that we're not nuts, but I'm still in awe, every day, that we have this beautiful house, and that it's our home.

And finally as the icing on the cake, we got to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas in our new home with ML's parents. It was a really great holiday. And it was really special to be able to have "Grandma and Grandpa" to spend it with! I was about to tell about those two days, which I haven't done yet. :O But I decided it would be better to save that for another post altogether.

There are SO many events (and I've probably missed some) that happened this year that I held only as distant daydreams....so I daresay, this year holds at least one dream-come-true.... don't you?

Making Progress

Thanks to all of you who gave me advice for our birth parent letter. It gave me the inspiration I needed to get it rolling! Yesterday ML and I sat down and wrote down some thoughts and ideas which provided a rough outline for the letter. BR and MC got in the spirit and threw out tidbits of their feelings about adopting a new baby. They are excited. (But BR is mostly only excited if it turns out to be a boy :P). MC even wrote down some of her thoughts on paper in her cute phonetic way of spelling things. :) She brought me a paper while ML and I were brainstorming yesterday that said, "I love babys bckes thay are sow kot. I like to play with my flamly eveday evin the dedy" Cute huh? (Translation in case some of it isn't obvious: I love babies because they are so cute. I like to play with my family everyday even the baby. ).

And then as I sat down to write the letter today Ben wrote his own letter to the baby. This is what it said:

"Dear Baby,
I would love you as a new brother [or sister] to play with. (I could use an extra set of hands) I would like [you] to play the wii with me and help me with shoveling the snow. I mean to have fun with [you]. I wonder what your birthday is. I could share my Legoes when you are 10 years old (like on 2007 for me). If you like one kind of lego product tell me what it is, okay.
Your brother,
Ben."

(I had to ask BR if we could add "or sister" into his letter and he was game as long as he didn't have to do it himself.) lol

And MC brought me a drawing of our family with the baby titled, "On that day I love the bady (baby), the dady wil hvv a famly (the baby will have a family)". Precious huh?

So, any of you who are interested in giving me feedback on our letter let me know and I'll email you a copy. (I'm too shy to post it for all to read...but not too shy to post my children's letters) ;)

Survey...

We have to write a "birth parent letter" that will be posted online on itsaboutlove.com for any potential birth parents that may look at our profile. From reading our birth parent letter and reading about us and our family they can decide if we might be a family they would like to consider. This idea of writing to an unknown birth parent, and saying the right thing, has really stumped me and I've been sitting on it for quite some time. I thought I'd survey all of you, petitioning for any ideas or advice about what you would write....Thank you all ahead of time for your input!! :)